Job 41.1
New International Version

¹ “Can you pull in Leviathan with a fishhook
or tie down its tongue with a rope?

² Can you put a cord through its nose
or pierce its jaw with a hook?

³ Will it keep begging you for mercy?
Will it speak to you with gentle words?

⁴ Will it make an agreement with you
for you to take it as your slave for life?

⁵ Can you make a pet of it like a bird
or put it on a leash for the young women in your house?

⁶ Will traders barter for it?
Will they divide it up among the merchants?

⁷ Can you fill its hide with harpoons
or its head with fishing spears?

⁸ If you lay a hand on it,
you will remember the struggle and never do it again!

⁹ Any hope of subduing it is false;
the mere sight of it is overpowering.

¹⁰ No one is fierce enough to rouse it.
Who then is able to stand against me?

¹¹ Who has a claim against me that I must pay?
Everything under heaven belongs to me.

¹² “I will not fail to speak of Leviathan’s limbs,
its strength and its graceful form.

¹³ Who can strip off its outer coat?
Who can penetrate its double coat of armor?

¹⁴ Who dares open the doors of its mouth,
ringed about with fearsome teeth?

¹⁵ Its back has rows of shields
tightly sealed together;

¹⁶ each is so close to the next
that no air can pass between.

¹⁷ They are joined fast to one another;
they cling together and cannot be parted.

¹⁸ Its snorting throws out flashes of light;
its eyes are like the rays of dawn.

¹⁹ Flames stream from its mouth;
sparks of fire shoot out.

²⁰ Smoke pours from its nostrils
as from a boiling pot over burning reeds.

²¹ Its breath sets coals ablaze,
and flames dart from its mouth.

²² Strength resides in its neck;
dismay goes before it.

²³ The folds of its flesh are tightly joined;
they are firm and immovable.

²⁴ Its chest is hard as rock,
hard as a lower millstone.

²⁵ When it rises up, the mighty are terrified;
they retreat before its thrashing.

²⁶ The sword that reaches it has no effect,
nor does the spear or the dart or the javelin.

²⁷ Iron it treats like straw
and bronze like rotten wood.

²⁸ Arrows do not make it flee;
slingstones are like chaff to it.

²⁹ A club seems to it but a piece of straw;
it laughs at the rattling of the lance.

³⁰ Its undersides are jagged potsherds,
leaving a trail in the mud like a threshing sledge.

³¹ It makes the depths churn like a boiling caldron
and stirs up the sea like a pot of ointment.

³² It leaves a glistening wake behind it;
one would think the deep had white hair.

³³ Nothing on earth is its equal —
a creature without fear.

³⁴ It looks down on all that are haughty;
it is king over all that are proud.”